“Electing Saudi Arabia to protect women’s rights is like making an arsonist into the town fire chief,” UN Watch’s Hillel Neuer stated.

UN Watch, a Geneva-based NGO, slammed Saudi Arabia’s election last week to a four-year term as a member of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.

“Electing Saudi Arabia to protect women’s rights is like making an arsonist into the town fire chief,” Hillel Neuer, the watchdog’s executive director, stated.

The UN Commission on the Status of Women describes itself as the “principal global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women.” Neuer questioned how Saudi Arabia could play any effective role in the organization, considering its policies on women.

“Every Saudi woman must have a male guardian who makes all critical decisions on her behalf, controlling a woman’s life from her birth until death,” noted Neuer. “Saudi Arabia also bans women from driving cars.”

Neuer also pointed to the shame and uproar conveyed on Twitter by a Saudi woman studying international human rights law in Australia.

“I wish I could find the words to express how I feel right know,” tweeted the Saudi woman, identified as @khuludAu on Twitter. “I’m ‘Saudi’ and this feels like betrayal.”

She also posted the hashtags #stopenslavingsaudiwomen and #IEscapedSaudiArabia.

Saudi Arabia was elected through secret ballot by the UN Economic and Social Council, of which the Commission on the Status of Women is a subsidiary body. Joining Saudi Arabia in representing the Asia-Pacific region in 2018 will be Iraq, Japan, South Korea and Turkmenistan.